Eliminating the colon as a word constituient

[Tim Johnson]

I am using emacs 22.31. on slackware 13.0 32-bit.

I suspect the problem here is my use (or misuse) of
'modify-syntax-entry, however I will outline my goal.

I have written a major mode for the rebol programming language.
The word 'print' is part of a font-lock group and is subject to syntax
highlighting.

The colon has special meaning both as a prefix and as a suffix in rebol.
given the word ':print' and the word 'print:', I would prefer that the
substring 'print' in both cases be highlighted the same way as the
white-space delimited word 'print'.

I have focused on the use of 'modify-syntax-entry to remove the colon as
a word constituient. I have been unsuccesful. Questions follow:

1)If indeed, removing the colon as a word constituient is the solution,
what is the correct syntax?

2)May I expect the successful changes to be reflected if I use
'eval-expression? Or must I have the code in the elisp file and run
load-library?

And on a related note:

3)Let's say that I have in my *Scratch* file the following:
(insert (standard-syntax-table)) and I evaluate the expression.

The result will be an error message that the argument to 'insert is of
the wrong datatype.

Is there a function that I can wrap 'standard-syntax-table in that will
convert it to a string?

As always, thanks
-- 
Tim 
tim@johnsons-web.com
http://www.akwebsoft.com